Mobility behaviours in peri-urban areas. The Milan Urban Region case study

The paper focuses on mobility practices and the emergence of new geographies of movements in Lombardy peri-urban areas, in order to investigate whether and if so how new processes of urban regionalization (Soja 2011, Brenner 2013, Young and Keil 2010) can be recognized through a plurality of forms and conditions of mobility behaviours. Enhancing, on the one hand, the contribution of Italian and French research on peri-urbanism and its different forms, and on the other hand following in a line of studies on “mobility turns”, this paper proposes a comparative analysis of some peri-urban areas characterized by specific processes of urban sprawl, differentiated by age, morpho-functional features and settlements within the Milan Urban Region. The hypothesis to investigate is whether and if so how the specificity and diversity of the processes of urban sprawl belonging t o different "generations" of peri-urbanism in Milan Urban Region affect the forms of mobility and lifestyles, showing different living habits and specific issues